George Clooney keeps an eye on Sudanese dictator by satellite

A reader points me to this article about George Clooney and his political activism, particularly his interest in the conflict between North and South Sudan: George Clooney tastes sustainability in Nespresso coffee – Lucy Siegle/theguardian.com

“Most of the money I make on the [Nespresso] commercials I spend keeping a satellite over the border of North and South Sudan to keep an eye on Omar al-Bashir [the Sudanese dictator charged with war crimes at The Hague]. Then he puts out a statement saying that I’m spying on him and how would I like it if a camera was following me everywhere I went and I go ‘well welcome to my life Mr War Criminal’. I want the war criminal to have the same amount of attention that I get. I think that’s fair.” [My emphasis]

One cannot literally keep a satellite poised over an arbitrary spot on earth but activists can certainly use commercial earth observation satellites to monitor particular areas. (Sats in geostationary orbit can hold a fixed position over the equator but even in that case they are far too high for high resolution imaging.) Satellite images might become available for a given spot every few days.

In the next few years, George Clooney and others will have greatly enhanced means to monitor dictatorial regimes as well as to spot hidden environmental disasters, trawlers fishing illegally, etc. In development are constellations of low cost earth imaging satellites such as Skybox Imaging and Planet Labs that aim to make it possible to monitor a particular spot on earth more frequently, even multiple times per day.

Already, the company MapBox is contracting with imaging satellite companies to offer processed imagery of most any spot around the world in real or near real time: Real Time Imagery via MapBox Satellite Live – MapBox. See also MapBox Plans to Bring You Super-Fresh Satellite Imagery – Wired Science.

The goal of Mapbax is provide individuals and small businesses and organizations with limited resources the equivalent of a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) analyst who will turn that raw satellite data into something that is useful for them at a bargain price.